An enterprise backup solution is an important consideration to assure that, in an emergency, the essential data of the company can be accessed when needed. Without it, the loss of the data, alone, could cause the collapse of the company. That is how important a company’s essential data has become.

Gone are the days when the CEO could manage the affairs of his entire organization from memory or even with a few handwritten notes. Our ability to collect massive amounts of data has driven personal memory out of competition. The more data we collect, the more we have come to depend on its storage and retrieval to maintain business operations.

Come and gone is the threshold where not just collection, storage and retrieval have become essential for operations. It is, for many companies, critical that enterprise data be backed-up. Everything from hard drives to servers have experienced crashes with resulting loss of original data.

Here are things to know about the right enterprise backup solution before purchasing it:

1. What is the importance of the data and to whom? It may not be enough to consider only data that is shared across several departments. The best gage of importance of enterprise data is to consider what their loss would do to the enterprise, even if the data are used by one individual in one department. An enterprise cannot determine importance of data until it has completed a thorough contingency plan of operations should a disaster of any kind occur. Which data represent loss of critical-path operations of the enterprise?

2. What is the frequency of data change? If essential enterprise data change daily, then backup must occur daily. This may not affect all data. The chosen enterprise backup solution ought to have the flexibility to differentiate data and perform backup on a multi-point schedule.

3. How fast must recovery of backed-up data be accessible? If data need to be accessed from backup storage on a daily basis, but a backup system being considered is only capable of recovery in three or four days, that system is insufficient for critical-path operations of the enterprise.

4. Who is responsible for backup and recovery of enterprise data? Yes, it is automated and scheduled equipment that performs the backup, and that equipment should be selected and purchased on the basis of the answers to all of these questions, but no system operates successfully in a void. A management-level employee of the enterprise needs to be appointed the task of management of the enterprise backup solution, whatever it may be.

5. Is it essential that the physical location of the enterprise backup solution be off-site? If a natural or man-made crisis destroys or damages the on-site systems of enterprise data collection and storage, it is essential that backup data be accessible. If that is also on-site, it is also subject to the same destruction. An off-site location for an enterprise backup solution, whatever its type, is essential for recovery and continuation of critical-path operations of the enterprise.